Journalism reminded me a lot of Sisyphus
Some days, being a journalist feels a lot like being Sisyphus. In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was punished for tricking death twice. His punishment was an eternal task: rolling a boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down before reaching the top. And then it all started again. And again. And again. It seems futile. But even worse, it’s purely repetitive.
This isn't a new metaphor for journalism. Even though I work in a versatile section – covering Science means I might write about Quantum Physics and Archaeology in the same day – the problem is bigger. We keep doing the same thing most days, often repeating the same mistakes.
A paper from last month by Kim Andersen, Benjamin Toff, and Brita Ytre-Arne 1 reminded me of the many reasons behind news avoidance: why do people want to ignore information about the world they live in?
At first, it’s hard for me to grasp. But then we hear about "fatigue" and "too much negativity" – justifications I find hard to understand. But then there’s "lack of trust" and "lack of quality." These last two always make me pause.
The reasons behind this loss of trust and quality are varied (I don’t claim to have the answer), but just in the last couple of days, I’ve seen issues: we publish too many articles, often because we think that’s what people want to read. The truth is: we don’t actually know what people want to read. We, as media organizations, lack proper studies of our own audiences and what they value.
This is very different from chasing what’s trending – like a meteor that makes for great photography but doesn’t build trust or deliver quality. In the end, it’s always the journalist’s job to decide what should be news; otherwise, we’re just creating content. The paper I mentioned quotes Swart et al. (2022): "If we decenter journalism in favor of whatever (non-news) media audiences themselves use and value as informative, what justifies the existence of journalism studies as a separate field of scholarship?"
We’re a bit lost here. We think following social media trends will help tackle news avoidance. Maybe, instead, we just need to be better at deciding what’s actually newsworthy. I’d say readers would thank us for it.
Supper (1), with Titian (1548/1549)
